As early as next month, the Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on the issue of net neutrality. While the issue has largely stayed in the background of the American public, at stake is the future of how internet traffic and information is handled by the providers that service consumers. Specifically, Chairman and Trump-appointee Ajit Pai is expected to reverse the previous administration’s reclassification of internet service providers (ISPs) under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Removing this classification would be harmful to consumers and a threat to the free trade of information online.
At its core, net neutrality is the idea that all websites should be given equal weight. That is, no service provider should be able to throttle or restrict information to one website while giving priority to another. Since Comcast owns NBC-Universal, for example, they cannot slow down speeds to Disney’s or Fox’s shows on Netflix. Even further, net neutrality can also affect the pay structure of internet service fees and prevent ISP’s from creating tiered systems in which they might charge more money for access to popular sites such ESPN.com. This concept has been a guiding principle for internet customers almost since its inception and has long guided its influence on modern society. The free and open spread of information, where all sites and opinions are given equal footing, is the very definition of our American ideals.
However, Title II takes this concept and turns it into law. ISP’s, previously thought of as “information carriers,” are now reclassified as “telecommunications carriers,” which has much stricter guidelines and regulations. In effect, these “common carriers” are regulated as being essential to the public good. Essentially, net neutrality is not just a concept; it is law. According to Section 202 of the Communications Act of 1934, it is unlawful for a carrier to show preference towards or discriminate against any person or class of persons (FCC). Or their websites, in this case.
ISP’s like Verizon and Comcast have long been opponents of this classification or any formal regulation of net neutrality in general. They state they are in favor of net neutrality standards, but view the FCC’s regulation as needless government oversight that impedes innovation and gives the consumer less choice.
“We applaud FCC Chairman Pai’s initiative to remove this stifling regulatory cloud over the Internet,” said AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson in a statement to the Washington Post.
Yet, throughout our modern digital era, ISP’s have shown time and again that they care very little about the consumers or innovation. In January, 24/7 Wall St. released a survey of companies based on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, employee reviews from Glassdoor, and its own annual polling. Comcast took the crown as the worst-reviewed company in the United States, while Dish Network and Charter Communications were not far behind.
In fact, looking at customer satisfaction surveys from previous years, one common denominator among the least satisfied customers were ISPs, with Comcast and Charter routinely taking spots high on the list. In 2010, three of the top five worst-reviewed companies according to Business Insider were internet service providers.
Consumers and the general public tend to favor net neutrality and the Title II regulation. In 2014, when the FCC originally brought the issue to a vote, the public comments phase was spurred on by outreach from tech companies like Google and Reddit, as well as a scathing viral segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The outpouring resulted in a record 3.7 million comments and forced Obama-era Chairman Tom Wheeler — a former lobbyist for the cable industry — to reverse his stance on Title II and make it law. Meanwhile, Comcast was in the midst of a dispute with Netflix, whom accused the cable provider of charging them an arbitrary tax before providing the same quality service as other streaming sites, a direct violation of the principles of net neutrality.
If anything, ISPs are blatantly open about their priority towards profit and monopolization over that of the public good. Even as the public comments phase ended last month over the removal of Title II, Comcast and Verizon are pushing for legislation that will ensure that states cannot make individual mandates that keep Title II or similar regulation in place in their markets despite the FCC ruling, which has no real oversight over state laws. These laws, discussed by about 30 states, aren’t just made in favor of net neutrality, but were made to ensure privacy protections for customers remain in place. Removing these laws would not only place customers at more risk, but would allow ISPs to then sell or reveal personal information on clients without permission.
That such sinister tactics would be carried out by ISPs is not much of a surprise, of course. For years, customers have dealt with a lack of true options due to the monopolization of marketplaces. Currently, many customers only have a choice of one cable provider: whichever made a local contract for that region to control the cable lines. If customers don’t want that provider, they are forced to use satellite, DSL, or smaller service providers, all of which use different technologies and thus have different speeds or drawbacks. All internet is not created equal, and the technologies in non-cable internet are vastly different.
This absolute control over marketplaces will likely only get worse without stringent regulations like Title II. Now, ISPs are merging with the companies that create the content they provide. Comcast bought out NBC-Universal in 2011. AT&T is poised to take over Time Warner, Inc. pending federal approval. These mergers are nothing less than the vertical integration that defines a monopoly and violates anti-trust laws. Indeed, they have not been seen on this scale within the industry since 1984’s United States V AT&T Co, when AT&T employed similar tactics with other telecommunications companies and was eventually forced to split by the Department of Justice.
They also provide the perfect motivation to block net neutrality legislation. Just as Comcast was accused of throttling Netflix’s speeds to customers, these massive conglomerates would not only own movie and television studios in direct competition with each other, but would also control the means to control the speeds and quality of a competitor’s content. They could also, if they so chose, decide to charge more if customers wanted to watch a competitor. Already, such tiered internet plans are being rolled out by ISPs in countries like Portugal and others without firm net neutrality legislation.
If ISPs were committed to the innovation they use to argue against Title II, perhaps this drive toward profit would make sense. Yet, statistics show that ISPs in the United States have given consumers no appreciable gains.
In 2017 alone, Comcast has made nearly $7.7 billion in profit, a nearly 21% increase from last year. Yet, Americans lag behind the rest of the world both in speed and cost. According to a 2015 report from the Center for Public Integrity, the U.S. is paying double, sometimes even triple, the rates that European countries do for comparable rates. They determined the cause for this is a lack of competition among service providers who essentially carve up territories to avoid competition.
And what are those speeds Americans pay for? The U.S. ranks only 11th, according the Speedtest Global Index, well below Romania and only slightly above Lithuania.
Clearly, this research and development that ISPs use as a defense against Title II is not happening. Even the rare small ISPs these giants use as shields are largely exempt from the same types of regulations that govern Comcast and Charter for the exact purpose of preventing a stifling of small business innovation. The few times that ISPs have gone to work building new infrastructure, it was at the order of President Obama or under the allure of government subsidies that paid for the groundwork. Otherwise, much of the telecommunications and cable sector are still using decades-old infrastructure while individual cities and Google Fiber are left to create new networks and municipal broadband on their own dimes (and often pull much faster, cheaper speeds than the major carriers in the process).
ISPs claim that the best stewards of the internet are the providers themselves, not the government. However, at every turn, ISPs have shown not only that they are not interested in protecting net neutrality if it hurts profits, but that they have completely disregarded any façade about caring about consumers in the process.
The internet is one of the most important technologies in human history, a force that has inevitably changed societies and our knowledge past the point of no return. While other countries censor or restrict internet usage as a means to control information their citizens receive, it is our moral duty in the United States to ensure that all users and sites are treated equally and fairly. Removing Title II would not only open the internet to the potential of censorship and place us on the same level of authoritarian states, it would be doing so not in the name of government regulation but the even worse hypocrisy of openly placing corporate profits over peoples’ freedoms.
